RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last January 1, on a Friday afternoon when Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel were transitioning into the restful Sabbath mode, a gunman on Dizengoff Street—Tel Aviv’s main thoroughfare—fired from a sidewalk into a bar and killed two young men, wounding seven other people.

The shooter, Nashat Milhem, was a 29-year-old Israeli Arab from the village of Arara in northern Israel. Just before the shooting he left his backpack in a grocery store; the backpack had a Koran in it. Just after the shooting he hailed a taxi and—under circumstances that remain unclear—killed the taxi driver, also an Israeli Arab, then abandoned the taxi, and managed to escape back to Arara on that same day.

It took Israeli security forces a week to locate and close in on Milhem in Arara on Friday, January 8. Although the hope was to take him alive and get information from him, in trying to escape from the house where he was hiding he opened fire on the security men and was shot dead.

The January 1 shooting came just two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a major, unprecedented plan to channel up to 15 billion shekels ($3.8 billion) into improving the living conditions of the Israeli Arab sector, which makes up about one-fifth of the Israeli population. The sequence of events has sparked an intense national debate in Israel about the Israeli Arabs and their future.

A survey of this sector taken in 2013 came up with some encouraging results. It found that 53 percent of the Israeli Arabs “accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish-majority state,” compared to 47 percent a year earlier, and that 63.5 percent—up from 58.5 percent—considered Israel “a good place to live.”

It also found 42.5 identifying as Israeli Arabs rather than as Palestinians—up from 32.5 percent two years earlier.

A survey reported in November 2015, however, had less cheerful tidings. It found 17 percent of the Israeli Arabs saying they support ISIS, and 57 percent saying the Israeli Islamic Movement—whose extreme northern branch was outlawed that same month—represents them.

Unlike the Palestinians in the territories, whose political status is not yet decided, the Israeli Arabs are citizens with full rights. They are not required to serve in the Israeli army, and most—apart from the small Druze Arab sector and small numbers of Christian and Bedouin Arabs—do not.

Although Israeli Arabs serve in the parliament, cabinet, and Supreme Court, and many have found professional success, their sector overall is poorer and considerably more crime-ridden than the Jewish sector.

The government’s new plan is aimed at improving their lot. It is not conditioned on matching rights with obligations—that is, on Israeli Arabs agreeing to serve in the military or even in a nonmilitary framework (known as “national service”).

But as Netanyahu put it when visiting the scene of the shooting in Tel Aviv: “Israel will enforce its laws and its sovereignty over all parts of the state [including Arab-populated ones]. We will build new police stations, recruit more police officers; we will enter every community and demand adherence to the laws of the state.”

Taiwan was betrayed by Nixon/Kissinger and then Carter who all bowed to Beijing’s demands for the “one China policy.” Carter infamously implemented the betrayal by removing the embassy in Taipei, and transferring it to mainland China….Taiwan is an economic success and was a staunch ally during the Cold War. This is another instance of appeasement of tyrants at the expense of allies which has become a sad part of our foreign policy….rsk
TAIPEI—The widely expected election victory this week of an independence-leaning candidate as Taiwan’s president is injecting new uncertainty to the island’s fraught ties with China and adding a potential headache for Washington.

Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, holds a substantial lead in most polls ahead of Saturday’s election on the island of 23 million people that Beijing regards as its territory. The vote follows nearly eight years of tightening relations between Taiwan and China under Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, whom critics say has been too accommodating of Beijing’s interests at the expense of the island’s deteriorating economy.

Ms. Tsai’s party, known as the DPP, supports Taiwan’s formal independence from China, while Mr. Ma’s Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, doesn’t. Though Ms. Tsai has pledged not to provoke Beijing, her elevation poses a challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has promoted a vision of a strong, politically unified China.

A change in Taiwan’s government also would further complicate the region’s strained security picture. After years of building up its military, Beijing is increasingly asserting control over disputed territories in the East China Sea and South China Sea, alarming Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, which have turned to Washington for support.

Barack Obama has a history of humiliating photo-ops associated with his full-blown Radical Islam Denial Syndrome: the burning consulate in Benghazi juxtaposed with Obama partying it up in Vegas with Beyonce; the dead bodies of ISIS-slain Parisians juxtaposed with Obama telling the world that ISIS could be fought with a climate change summit; corpses in San Bernardino juxtaposed with Obama simultaneously telling a national audience that ISIS was contained.

Perhaps the worst one yet happened on Tuesday.

As Obama prepared for his last State of the Union address – an event he pitched with hijinks and mugging for the cameras – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard arrested 10 American sailors and seized two Navy boats. Obama never mentioned it in his State of the Union address; the day after the address, Iran returned the sailors, unharmed.

But the message was clear to those who were watching: Obama had been castrated on the world stage by Iran, a country he once termed “tiny compared to the Soviet Union.”

That message became clearer on Wednesday morning, when Iran also released photos of American sailors on their knees, hands behind their heads, at the beck and call of a Shiite terrorist army; a female sailor forced to wear a hijab; a male sailor forced to apologize on camera for supposedly encroaching into Iranian waters. The IRG accused the Americans of “snooping” and Iranian army chief Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said, “This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces’ last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the U.S. Congress.”